Landless Estates get millions to upgrade their water infrastructure.

Kiambu CEC Water, Environment & Social Services Ms. Esther Wanjiru Njuguna seen here launching the drilling of the borehole in Landless Estate on Saturday. She said that the problem of water shortage will be a thing of the past in the next two years.

The County Government of Kiambu has started drilling a KES.
4 million borehole to upgrade Landless- Gatundu Estates’ drinking water
infrastructure so as to address a water crisis that has been affecting thousands
of households.

The project will enable the area to ‘accelerate and expand’
its water accessibility especially to reach Gatundu-Landless Phase II area that
has been experiencing challenges in accessing water.

This was revealed by the CEC Water, Environment & Social
Services Ms. Esther Wanjiru Njuguna on Saturday while launching the
sinking of the borehole.

“We have allocated KES. 4million towards this project. The money
will be utilised in the drilling of the borehole, purchase of the water pump
and the installation of electricity among others. Here, we target to produce
about 2000 litres of water per hour, which when combined with the usual river
water pumped by THIWASCO, will be enough to supply water in the whole area,”
said the CEC.

(Related story: THIWASCO Promises Uninterrupted Water Supply Soon.)
She reckoned that since the year 2005, the influx of people
into the area had been phenomenon, causing the demand for water to exceed the
current supply. She added that the infrastructure would benefit about 3,000
households.

“The amount of water that gets into the pipes from the main
treatment plant is no longer enough to be pumped up into these tanks because all
of it is consumed domestically into people’s homes leaving nothing for storage.
This means that in case of an outage, there will be no water to serve the
residents before normalcy is restored,” said Njuguna.

Njuguna said that THIWASCO was currently working to replace old
pipes with larger ones and increasing the existing pipe networks so as to
increase the volume of water getting into homes. She advised those with
small pipes to liaise with the water provider so as to ensure their pipes were
upgraded to accommodate more water.

“Plans are also underway to connect (Landless) Phase II with
the main pipe from Athena to enable them access more water through gravity. We are
also allocating funds to provide Landless and Riverside areas with a sewerage
network that will be directed to a new plant to be put up in Gatuanyaga area,”
explained Njuguna.

(See Also: THIWASCO: These are the reasons you missed water for a week.)
She added that plans were at an advanced stage to drill more
boreholes in all areas that have an existing water storage tank as a temporary
measure before they completed a major infrastructural project at Kariminu in
Gatundu North Sub-County that will drain drinking water into Thika Town through
gravity.

“In the next two years, the problem of water scarcity in
Thika Town will be a thing of the past after the completion of the Kariminu
water treatment plant,” concluded the CEC.